Research Director
After a national search, Dr. Jeffrey Warren has been named research director for the North Carolina Policy Collaboratory, effective March 6, 2017.
Warren will report to Brad Ives, the director of the Collaboratory, who also serves as the University’s chief sustainability officer and associate vice chancellor for campus enterprises. Warren will work closely with Steve Wall, who is jointly serving as the Collaboratory’s community outreach liaison and as a policy research associate at the University’s Institute for the Environment, to coordinate the Collaboratory’s research operations, partnerships and reporting to the N.C. General Assembly.
Warren will develop requests for proposals for research, as approved by the faculty-led Collaboratory Advisory Board, supporting natural resource management issues within North Carolina. He will also support and monitor research on Collaboratory projects; work with researchers to prepare reports for the General Assembly; and support other operational needs of the Collaboratory.
“Jeff’s relationships and experience at both the General Assembly and across state government will be great assets in the future work of the Collaboratory,” says Ives. “We have already made great strides in project development over the last six months and will be gearing up, with Jeff’s help, to do substantial work to apply the scientific expertise of the University of North Carolina system to the needs of North Carolina and its citizens in the area of natural resources management.”
Warren brings to the Collaboratory 13 years of natural resource-related policy experience working for the State of North Carolina, most recently serving since 2011 as the science policy advisor for the Office of the President Pro Tempore of the North Carolina Senate. Prior to that, Warren worked for the Division of Coastal Management within the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality as a coastal hazards specialist, during which time he was appointed as an adjunct assistant professor in the Marine Science and Conservation Division of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences. Before his state service, Warren worked as a geologist in the private sector.
Warren earned a B.Sc. in Geosciences at the University of Arizona, a M.Sc. in Geology at Auburn University and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from UNC-Chapel Hill. He can be contacted at jeff.warren@unc.edu.